Enspire Vitesse XPS

The Vitesse XPS from Enspire is designed for all-round entertainment and productivity -- including gaming and TV, as well as more mundane office tasks. We are looking at sub AU$2,000 systems and this Enspire has just squeezed under the limit by leaving out speakers. For the full multimedia experience just plug the Vitesse into your existing sound system and off you go.

Design
Designed around functionality, this machine provides heaps of room for add-ons -- which we always like. There are more card slots than you could poke a memory-stick at and a triple-fan cooling system to ensure your chips don't get fried -- all very impressive. The mini-tower case is finished in black, and the front panel also includes a small selection of ports. There are enough blue LEDs on this unit to resemble a small Christmas tree -- the apparent duty of each of these is to make this brute look even more formidable. It's hard to imagine such a large box being used in the lounge to run your TV -- but it would be tidy little system to tuck away in a bedroom or study where it could replace several other machines.

Opening the case is easy; there are just two thumb screws giving full access to the guts of the machine. The internals are neatly arranged, and for upgrading later the drive cradles allow for screw-free maintenance.

Features
There are seven card slots inside; two of these were already occupied by the TV adaptor (which has digital and analog co-axial inputs, plus an AV-in) and the GeForce graphics card with its twin DVI outputs, S-video port and 256MB of dedicated memory. The CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.4GHz, and is accompanied by 2GB of RAM.

Speakers should really be supplied with the machine -- after all, Windows Media Center actually refuses to tune into TV without a set being plugged in -- which may sound fair, but is very confusing.

Also supplied with this test unit was a 19 inch widescreen LCD monitor (1440x900) from Samsung. The monitor has a full range of adjustment options - height, tilt and swivel.

The operating system is Windows Vista Home Premium, and includes Media Center for all your audio-visual needs. Supplied software includes the open-source versions of OpenOffice, for office productivity, and Mozilla Thunderbird, an email client. The Enspire comes with a one-year onsite warranty, extendable to three-years.

Performance
Windows Media Center is your portal to the system's audio-visual capabilities, and this particular machine could easily run Media Center with one arm -- read processor -- tied behind its back. The Samsung monitor included with the system has a clear, sharp picture which we really couldn't fault. Both the Microsoft mouse and keyboard behaved without incident - as you would hope for basic wired models.

We know that the Vitesse XPS is not a really hard-core gaming machine -- the low price tag alone confirms that -- but it'll do the trick for most of us. A 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor certainly kicks things along nicely, and the GeForce video card packs some punch, and helps round out what is a well turned out machine.

The 'Windows Experience Index' (WEI) score is Microsoft's new rating system intended to give users an idea of the suitability of software for their system. Windows Vista gives the hardware a base WEI of 5.3, with the CPU being the lowest scoring component by a smallish margin (the processor has a performance that certainly isn't to be sniffed at either). WEI scores for Graphics and Gaming graphics were 5.9 and 5.6 respectively, out of a possible 5.9.

We also tested the Vitesse with a range of different benchmarks which included PCMark 2005 and 3DMark 2006. The PCs performance in the last benchmark attests to its good graphics performance, and the PCMark score indicates a high general performance.

Overall, this is an impressive machine performance-wise, especially when compared to other entertainment PCs. It really still needs wireless/IR controls and, of course, a great big cabinet to store it in. If you do plan to use the Enspire in the lounge, consider purchasing it without the monitor, and hook it up to a decent big screen TV instead.